MySecretGarden: Bouquets

It's time to cut hydrangea bouquets.

Some of them will stay in the house, and some will decorate my garden working table through the winter.

Almost all the blue flowers turned green in August.

The majority of the flowers for the bouquets shown below came from the bushes of Nicco Blue which grows in a shady northern border against a wall and in a more sunny back hedge:

What is interesting, is that one of the bushes produced several late blooms which are bright blue.

They look like aliens among dozens of green mop heads.

I believe the flowers that have a purplish hue were cut from an Endless Summer bush.
The whole bush is turning purple right now.
Thus, the Endless Summer plant went from blue to green to purple.
An interesting transformation!

I found some explanation of the green hydrangea heads here: Green Hydrangea Flowers

It is based on the facts that hydrangea blooms are not petals, but sepals.

Here is the abstract from the source:

"There is a cause of green hydrangea blooms. It’s Mother Nature herself with a little help from the French gardeners who hybridized the original hydrangeas from China. You see, those colorful flowers aren’t petals at all. They’re sepals, the part of the flower that protects the flower bud. Why do hydrangeas bloom green? Because that’s the natural color of the sepals. As the sepals age, the pink, blue or white pigments overpower the green so colored hydrangea blossoms often fade to green over time.

Many gardeners believe that color is controlled solely by the availability of aluminum in the soil. Aluminum gives you blue flowers. Bind up the aluminum and you get pink. Right? That’s only part of the story. Those green hydrangea flowers turn color with longer days of light. Light gives those colors the energy to dominate. The color can last for weeks and then you find your hydrangea flowers turning green again. The days are becoming shorter. The blue, pink and white pigments lose energy and fade away. Once again, green hydrangea flowers reign.

But if your hydrangea with green flowers is any of the other types and the blooms refuse to change, you’re the victim of one of Mother Nature’s occasional pranks and horticulturalists have no explanation for the condition. It may be a combination of unusual weather conditions, but no scientific reason has been found. Take heart. Your hydrangea with green flowers should only suffer the condition for a season or two before the plant returns to normal.Sometimes you’ll find a hydrangea with green flowers all season long. If you’re new to the garden or the plant is new to you, and the plant blooms later than its brethren, you might have a variety called “Limelight.” These relatively new plants have much smaller leaves than the big leaf varieties, although their blooms look similar to the mophead hydrangeas. Flowers turning green is natural to this beauty whose blooms begin and end in white but are bred to be green in between those times."